


The Lateness of the Hour

by Lisbetadair



Category: Call of Duty (Video Games)
Genre: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 23:24:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13646583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisbetadair/pseuds/Lisbetadair
Summary: After MW3 Price has to return to England, to tie up some loose ends, but it means facing up to the decisions he made years ago. Does he even have anything to return to?The sequel to my magnum opus The SAS And The Glam That Goes With It (which is now available here as well as FF.net), telling the story of what happens to Price, Sam, Vivianne and MacMillan.





	1. Chapter 1

**September 2016**

Jim McMillan scowled. He couldn’t see her from his office, but he still knew that she was there, lurking on the perimeter.

She had been there for five days, camping in their old caravan, draped with banner that lambasted his bosses. Today, his heart had sunk as he’d noticed she’d been joined by two further tents. It was only a matter of time, he thought, before they were besieged by rent-a-crowd, dreadlocked anarchists looking for an excuse for a protest. He snorted in disgust. He reckoned he could put money on them being vegetarians too.

It had been two weeks since the Americans had accused Price and MacTavish of the murder of General Shepherd. Since then, the British government had been grovelling on their knees before their American masters, bleating assurances that they could be trusted. Meanwhile Stirling Lines was undergoing a rapid schism, with those who wanted to rapidly distance themselves from the mutinous pair and those, like himself, who could detect the faint odour of something rotten about the whole business. He had known Price for over fifteen years. He still owed him for the business at Pripiyat, and the rest.

He’d never liked Shepherd, and he’d never quite been able to put his finger on why. There had been something shifty about him, something not quite right. Since Price had reappeared, MacTavish had been dispatching him regular updates on the sly. The whole business about getting Price out of Petropavlosk stank to high heaven. He refused to believe that Shepherd couldn’t have known who 627 was for a bloody start. Even if it had been someone else, what had been the final plan? To hang him out as bait? Makarov was an old warhorse, and the only reason he was still alive and not rotting in Petropavlosk himself was because he was smart enough to see through the plans of others.

In the meantime, he was still left with a war on his hands and now he had furious wrath of Vivianne to deal with too. He still hadn’t found out who had decided that the best course of action was to declare Vivianne _persona non grata_ , but when he found them, they were going to get a swift kick in the arse, and then some.  The war had brought some old rivalries simmering to the surface, and, unwittingly, Vivianne was a pawn in someone’s power game. It made him enraged that in times like these, the first thing some people thought of was how to further their own ends.  

It gave him no satisfaction that he’d been right about the whole graveyard relocation in the first place. Sure, St Michael’s wasn’t limitless, and they had to think about the future, but having the additional admin of clearing grieving relatives for access to the base to visit the graves of their dearly departed was another pen-pushing headache no one wanted or needed They’d already had to separate a vicious cat fight between a widow and whatever you called the mistress of a dead man last Valentine’s Day. The higher ups had insisted that loss of access to the burial ground would act as a deterrent against misbehaviour, but that had missed the finer points of the politics.

Overall, he thought it was harsh, even if he had never liked her. The press had camped out on Price’s lawn, harassing his permanently nervous wife as she tried to get through her own garden gate. In the footage he’d seen she had looked like she was about to be sick or cry, possibly both at once. MacMillan felt quite sorry for her. Vivianne was made of sterner stuff. She had called them vultures, adding that there was no way in _hell_ John Price was a traitor to his country. A fresh-faced woman from Al-Jazeera had asked her if she thought Price could kill an American general and she’d answered that _of course_ he could, what the hell did they think they spent their time on the base doing, learning to bloody _crochet_? In the shocked silence that had followed she narrowed her eyes, drawn herself to her full height and said, imperiously, that if John Price _had_ killed Shepherd then he had a bloody good reason for doing so and what were they doing standing there when they should be finding out _why_.

Secretly, MacMillan admired her bravado, even if her outburst had cost her. Plus, she was _right_.

He picked up the copy of The Guardian that had been left on his desk, with the interview in question helpfully earmarked. It was a two page spread with a picture of her in the centre, playing the part of the wronged widow with wide-eyed innocence, looking off camera wistfully into the middle distance. At first he’d struggled to put his finger on what was wrong with the picture, and then he realised that she wasn’t not wearing makeup, she’d deliberately painted herself to look like the colour had been washed from her face, as if the struggle was draining her soul. He pursed his lips. It took great effort, but he had to admit that she was bloody smart little bitch.

He noted with interest that she was using the title, probably a warning shot to the MoD that she wasn’t to be fucked around. She might be plain old Mrs Gaz Bradley by marriage, but she was Lady Vivianne Fairfax by birth, the outcast scion on a family that had an unbroken military presence since the last century. General Lord Robert, or “Uncle Bertie” if you were a Fairfax, might have retired to a cosy velvet cushion in the Lords, but he still had clout in his old stomping grounds, and MacMillan knew he’d been chewing on his successors’ ears to lay off his errant niece. If that didn’t work, some other node of the family network would bring financial or political pressure to bear. With any luck, the problem would soon be out of his hair and not a moment too soon.

 


	2. Chapter 2

** June 2012 **

 

Long before MacTavish joined the regiment, a tabloid clipping had been pinned to the ancient cork of the general noticeboard: a full-page splash from the siege of Clapham College. The image in question taken during one of the many interminably boring hours prior to the event’s self-resolution, as a cache of giggling and flagrantly intoxicated students exchanged flirtatious obscenities from the window of their flat with the men camped out below. The photographer had been between them; shooting beside the soldiers, faces unreadable behind balaclavas, as they watched the raucous display, culminating when one ripped off her shirt, exposing her chest beneath, and hurled it down. The shutter came down as one man reached up, forever freezing the shirt in its fall towards him, just out of his reach, and capturing the girl overbalancing as her friends clung to her.

Gaz had been the first to point it out to him, stopping MacTavish in his tracks as he passed the board, grabbing his arm and spinning him round as he stabbed the yellowed, crackling paper with his finger.

“What do you think, eh?” He asked, his face bright with a sudden, boyish glee.

MacTavish had stammered a non-committal reply. He knew how exposed he was, as the new boy, to becoming the butt of jokes and regarded this situation with deep suspicion.

 “Come on! She’s gorgeous! You’d give her one, right?” Gaz punched him, lightly, on his shoulder.

He’d agreed, mostly to be polite, but also because whatever the truth behind the image, she _was_ beautiful. The picture was perfectly balanced, a strange homage to Michelangelo in the cold light of a London afternoon. Her long, dark hair flowed forward in a dark stream, following the motion of her arm, framing her pale face with its expression of exuberant joy. Her wild vivacity tempted him, and he couldn’t draw his eyes away. He stared at her until Gaz broke him from his reverie.

“She’s my wife!” he’d said, grinning triumphantly.

“Fuck off!” MacTavish had replied, with an incredulous laugh.

“You don’t believe me.” said Gaz, looking hurt.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his tattered wallet, flipping it open to reveal the photograph inside. Sure enough, the same woman stared back: fully clothed, in a delicate yet unmistakable wedding dress, her hair tamed and set with a crown of miniature white roses. Next to her, resplendant in his dress uniform, and wearing an expression of bursting pride, was Gaz.

“But...” MacTavish stuttered.

“I cut that out of the paper and stuck it up there in ’99 and said “I’m gonna marry that girl and I did.” He explained, his tone distinctly smug.

“And you just, left that there with her tits out?” MacTavish had spluttered, disbelieving.

He shrugged “She’s not bothered. People do daft things when they’re young.” He regarded the clipping affectionately. “You have to take it down if I die though. If I catch you perving over my widow, I’ll come back and haunt you.”

These words echoed painfully in his ears. He could feel the pressure of grief welling again as he stared at the space where the clipping had been a, bright patch where the cork around it had faded and crumbled. The banal finality of it hit him with slapping force. He could have pretended otherwise, that if he just looked hard enough, happened to be in the right place at the right time, he would find Gaz, somewhere and everything would be okay, but he was staring at the irrefutable evidence of the gap in the world where he had been.  

 

 

He’d missed the funeral, being indisposed behind the lines of the Russian civil war at the time, but he couldn’t claim that there hadn’t been a chance to pay his respects since his return. He’d wasted countless empty hours between meetings and physio, rotting his brain with day-time television and stuffing crisps into his mouth. The simple, craven truth: he couldn’t face it, couldn’t bear the pressure of confessing his sins.

 Gaz was dead, and no matter how he replayed his hazy memories of the events on the bridge, or that officially, the account of his actions was exemplary, the guilt haunted him, possessed him in the darkness before the sedatives kicked. He heard whispering accusations in his head whenever it was quiet: If he’d been stronger, faster, _better…_ then the clipping would still be on the board, there would be one less name on the clocktower, and they’d be spending the hazy afternoon marking the end of the first stage of selection in the grounds of the old vicarage that Gaz had the good fortune to call his home.

It had taken every ounce of energy to leave the flat that afternoon. If it had been anyone else who’d asked, he would have said no, but he couldn’t duck out of the invitation, even though the thought of attending had almost unmanned him: he owed Price his life after all. Next year, he would reach mandatory retirement, and even though he would still be welcome, MacTavish knew that it wouldn’t be the same. He didn’t want to go but adding more guilt to his already unbearable burden was unwise at best, so he forced himself to shave, shower and ignore the sweet call of the drinks cupboard, and struck out into the morning.

The summer sun was at its highest, the sky a downturned bowl of brilliant blue in every direction and eventually, the warmth of it on his skin, the lush, verdant green of life around him and the thumping trance music he blasted into his ears conspired together to make him feel better, and he was almost ashamed that he had considered bottling out. As pressed the doorbell, he found that he was almost looking forward it, and then she opened the door.

He stared at her, stunned and slack-jawed, the last person he expected to see.

“Oh. Hello, Iain.” She said.

Vivianne had cut her hair into a short crop, and the change was striking, but it didn’t distract from the destruction that loss had wreaked on her:  the dullness of her skin, the way her collarbones stuck out in a way that they hadn’t before and the vivacious _joie de vivre_ that had fled from her usually animated face. Her smile had once shone with radiance, but now it seemed weak, anaemic and robbed of life.

He’d never known her that well, but he’d visited Gaz at home a few times, and even run an errand for him, picking up a poster from her shop in the town. Even with the passage of a decade, she had still been beautiful, had the same joyous, lust for life that he’d seen in her photograph and every time he looked at her he had to force the fact he’d seen her half-naked out of his mind.

She stared at him, expectantly, and he felt sick.

She had a small girl balanced on her hip and MacTavish recognised her as the daughter Gaz had spoken of. She had bred true to her mother, a small, pale face and with dark brown eyes that regarded him with wary suspicion. He smiled at her, and she hid her face in the fabric of her mother’s sleeve.

“Um... yeah. Hi.” He replied, looking at his shoes and desperately wishing the doorstep would crack and swallow him whole. He struggled to fill the awkward silence. “I brought... stuff.” He held up the box of cider, the bottles clinking.

“Great!” she said, rather flatly. “There’s some ice boxes outside. Do you know where you’re going? Becca needs the loo.” She hefted the girl, who was still hiding.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

She left him there, on the front step, in a cloud of faint perfume, ascending to the upper floor of the house with her long black skirt billowing behind her. He watched her go, her daughter peaking out briefly and hiding again when he caught her eye.

As she reached the landing, he realised that he was holding his breath, and let out the bursting pressure in his lungs with a deep sigh that left him sagging. Adrenaline had coursed through his system, and as soon as it had peaked, it had dropped away, leaving the bass thumping of his own heart pounded loud in his ears. He reached out to clutch at the door frame, trying to steady himself. He had to sit down, or he would fall down and the thought of a crowd of people gathered round to stare at him made him feel ill. He steeled himself, and stumbled inside.

In the back garden, Price was manning the barbeque, sweating already from the heat of the coals and the baking sun. His wife was beside him, wearing her permanently anxious expression, and he recognised a few faces from other squads. Price was well-liked and respected, for all his gruff mannerisms, and MacTavish knew that he wasn’t the only man who was going to miss him. He was glad at least for a good send off.

He dropped the cider bottles in an empty ice box and picked up a bottle of beer from the cold, icy swill of another. On the edge of the patio, he found an empty deckchair and flopped into it. He’d talk to Price when there was less of crowd, but right now he needed time to settle, to still the seething, anxious waters of his mind, which was still reeling from his experience at the front door. He clasped his hands in front of him, trying to still the shaking left by the rush leaving his system. He tried to relax, leaning back in the chair and letting the sun warm him, but there was something gnawing at him, a sense of being watched.

 He opened his eyes again and looked round. Standing close, just a few metres away at the edge of the slabs, there was a small boy. There was no mistaking who he was, because unlike his sister, he had bred true to his father. He stared at MacTavish, his laurel eyes narrow with anger.

MacTavish stared back, expecting the boy to look away, shyly, like his sister had done, but he didn’t.

“You knew my Dad.” He blurted out, eventually.

MacTavish was taken aback at his bluntness, but many of his nightmare scenarios had featured Gaz’s children, their curious questions piercing him like arrows. At least he felt prepared for this scenario.

“Yeah” he answered. There was no point in lying.

He knew from his own bitter experience how adults treated children in the aftermath of tragedy: the whispers, the hidden looks that passed between them beyond his understanding.

He looked at the boy again, remembering his name: David. His small body strained with a mix of rage, and fear. MacTavish saw it in his clenched fists, his constantly shifting gaze. He knew he wasn’t supposed to ask these questions, wasn’t supposed to open old wounds, but MacTavish remembered the burning need to know eclipsing the others, driving him to ask and ask and ask.

 “He was a good man.” MacTavish said eventually, despising the weak platitude even as it left his lips.

“That’s what they all say.” David’s voice was hard, every word accented with compressed rage.

“Doesn’t make it any less true.” MacTavish replied.

“What _happened_ to him?” the boy said, enunciating each word, every sound loaded with accusation. MacTavish knew how much effort it cost him to ask, to transgress what his mother’s orders.

“David?” Vivianne had spotted them, isolated from the main party. She strode towards them over the grass“Don’t bother Iain, _please_.” She looked pained.

“I want to _know_.” The boy glared at her, and her expression hardened.

“We _talked_ about this, David.” She said, through gritted teeth.

“It’s all right.” MacTavish interrupted. Vivianne gave him a sharp look. “Look wee man, can you do me a favour?”

David nodded.

“Go ask your Auntie Sam for a cigar for me, would you? I need to talk to your Mum for a minute.”

The boy glared at him, the betrayal evident in his expression.

“I’m sorry.” Said Vivianne, as he left. She collapsed into the chair beside him, the metal scraping on the slab. “He’s been… understandably difficult recently.”

“I’m sorry. I should have come by. Paid my respects.”

She waved away his concern. “I think we’ve had plenty of that, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

He wanted to scream at her, scream that it was his fault that Gaz was dead.

She shaded her eyes and looked at him, sensing his tension. “You were there, when he died.”

MacTavish couldn’t answer her.

“He liked you. He always had a sense for a who was going to be a good fit.” She sniffed and then shook her head. “Anyway… I’m sorry about David. I keep telling him not to bother people about it.”

“What did you tell him… about…” He couldn’t say Gaz’s name in front of her “What happened?”

She unclasped her hand and gestured emptily in the air. “That his father died fighting for what he believed in. That he was a brave man and noble soldier. Like Gaz believed in anything.” She snorted. The strain in her voice was palpable. She had loved him, loved him with a depth and passion that MacTavish couldn’t begin to understand. “I can’t tell him anymore, he’s… he’s a child.”

“But he’s not stupid.”

“You think I should tell the _truth_? That-”

“Look.” MacTavish interrupted.“It won’t get any better if he doesn’t get the choice to find out.”

“What makes you an expert in parenting all of a fucking sudden?” Vivianne snapped “I-“

“I know what it’s like. I’ve been that kid.”

“I’m sorry.” She pressed her hand to her forehead, massaging her fingers into the skin, hard, as if it pained her. “I shouldn’t…”

“It’s okay” he shrugged. “It wasn’t nice… but it was better, in a way because… I can’t… I can’t put my finger on it, but it was like then… we were all in it together.”

She pushed her fingers into her hair, clawing at it. “I can’t-“

“No. Jesus! Fuck, _no_ …” He shook his head. “But, he should get the choice. I think.”

Vivianne chewed her lip in a gesture that was so unlike the woman he remembered that it deeply unnerved him “He’s just… so young. And… I know you… I know you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Trust me. It’s not pleasant, and I don’t think it’ll make him happy, but if it keeps festering…. It’ll just get worse.” MacTavish knew that she was right, that he didn’t want to talk about it, but owed Gaz and that meant he _definitely_ owed his son. If Price wasn’t going to do it, then someone had to and no one, he thought, had more of a debt to repay to Gaz’s family than him. He had to start somewhere, had to do _something_.

They watched David, who had located Sam. She looked up at the direction he pointed in, frowning. MacTavish waved, and she went inside, David following behind.

Vivianne was silent beside him. “I think it might be better if you spoke to him alone” she said eventually.

“All right.” He said. “He might want to go home afterwards, I’ll come and get you.”

She gave him a thin smile, but there was no pleasantness in it. He didn’t blame her. He suspected that it was bred into her not to show weakness, regardless of her pursuit of more bohemian ideals, and he didn’t like putting her in this position, even if it wasn’t really his choice to do so.

She stood up, brushing invisible dust from her dress and turned back to him as if there was something else she felt she should say and they looked at each other awkwardly for a few moments, until she turned away and was swallowed by the crowd.

 _What the fuck have done?_ He thought, and part of him wanted just to get up and leave, not to start this, but as if on cue, David reappeared. He thrust the cigar towards him, letting MacTavish pluck it from his hand as he stood up.

“Where’d Mum go?” he asked, looking round.

MacTavish shrugged. “If you’re finding this hard, just remember that she is too. Today’s not the day to make her reopen old wounds.”

“Are you… are you going to tell me about Dad?” he asked, incredulous.

MacTavish clipped the end from the cigar and lit it, clouding his face in with the first puff dark smoke. The fruits of exploiting Sam’s ignorance:  the prize of a Padron ’26, which filled his lungs with intense, earthy smoke. He hoped Price would turn a blind eye: they weren’t cheap. For a moment, it was a welcome distraction, the calm before the storm was about to break. He had been in warzones at home and abroad, done many morally questionable things for his country, but nothing had filled him with as much dread as the task that lay ahead of him. He thought about Gaz, alive, for the first time in weeks, and the things they’d talked about in the days before they’d last set off. Gaz had trusted him, and he had failed him. The least he could do was try to keep his family together.

“Come on.” He jerked his head, and the boy fell in line behind him.

At the bottom of Price’s garden a derelict greenhouse, declared absolutely out of bounds for the party, and screened off by a chicken wire fence, clung to life by only the barest margin. Most of the panes were cracked and smashed, the wrought iron frame rusty and crumbling. Between this and the wall that marked the end of Price's territory, a narrow space littered with stacks of terracotta pots and bags of compost existed in shadow. MacTavish overturned one for boy to sit on and after a short hunt, a steel bucket for himself. He put his feet up on another.

“How old are you?” He asked.

“Eight.” David replied, sullenly.

MacTavish nodded. “My Dad died when I was about your age.”

David looked up sharply “Was he a soldier?” He asked.

“No. He worked on the rigs, out in the North Sea.” MacTavish paused, taking a long draw on the cigar. “One night, by mistake, someone make a mistake. Wasn’t their fault, they didn’t know, and then: _boom_. The whole fucking rig exploded.”

David regarded him with wide eyes, but said nothing.

“Suddenly, my Dad wasn’t coming home, and my house was full of people talking in whispers in corners, telling me not to annoy my Mum. Telling me that my Dad was a good, brave man doing a dangerous job.” He looked at David, who looked away. “I knew there was more to it than that, because people clammed up when I came over, talked in whispers, spelled out words. Something wasn’t right. So I asked, and I asked and no one would tell me anything.”

“Eventually, my Uncle Charlie caved in. My Dad didn’t die in that explosion, not right away. Afterwards, in the fire he couldn’t get out, couldn’t get to the lifeboats. So, him and all of his mates tried to shelter in the living quarters, hoping that it would hold out until help could get there and put the fire out.”

“They lasted an hour, and then the whole rig just came apart. The whole accommodation block just came off and went into the sea. No one got out. They went down with it.”

David shifted. He looked scared, but MacTavish went on.

“So, I knew, and that was that.” He paused, letting this sink in. He left out the nightmares that had started afterwards, the longstanding fear of boats and the depths, the screams that echoed in his mind at night. “I’ll tell you what happened if you want me to, but once you know, you can’t… un-know it. You can just leave it, come back in a few years. Never if you want to. No one will think any less of you.”

“I want to know.” Said David eventually. He clenched and unclenched his small hands. He was shaking.

MacTavish sighed, grinding the cigar between his teeth. He had been half-hoping the boy would bail out, and they could come back to it when he was older, but it was not to be. “There are some things I can’t tell you, some details that, we’re not allowed to say, because that’s the rules of the job and I’ve got to respect that. That’s not my choice. Your Dad lived by the same rules, right?”

The boy nodded.

“Sometimes, you have to do things in secret. Say, one of your pals wants to… win a race at the sports day and if he wins, his Mum and Dad will take him to Alton Towers, and you know he’ll get to take a friend. So, you agree to help him, take him out running to practice, let him borrow your good trainers and when he wins, you both get a nice day out.That’s what we do. Me, Uncle John, your Dad. We went to help someone, who couldn’t do what they wanted to do themselves and if we didn’t help them, lots of people, families, kids. They were going to die.”

“Did you win?” David asked.

MacTavish just swallowed this gross oversimplification without comment, even if it grated on him. He wanted to say that it was more complicated than that, it wasn’t about winning or losing, but today wasn’t the day.

“Yes.” He sighed “We did. We all did a great job. Especially... especially your Dad.”

“So why did he have to die?”

MacTavish closed his eyes. The pressure was starting again in his chest. “We… we did what we had to do, but we had to get out. We were thousands of miles away from here, surrounded by people on the other side, people who wanted us dead.” He gestured beyond the garden wall with the butt of the cigar "We made out to the bridge, thought we were going to get away, and then it just exploded.”

He heard his voice catch as he remembered, the ringing in his ears, the choking dust and debris filling the air and the awful smell of scorched fuel and flesh. For a moment, he was back there, feeling Grigg’s arms pulling him, trying to drag him upright, and then dying in a sudden moment, because of _him_.  He took a few breaths to steady himself, and then he carried on.

“I woke up a few moments later, couldn’t see anything for dust and couldn’t hear. Someone” He stopped again, and breathed hard, remembering Griggs “Was trying to help me, trying to pull me out, but he was exposed, and he died trying. Your Uncle John was out of it, I was hit… the bad men came.” He saw Zakhayev come through the dust, striding forward unstoppable. “Your Dad, he was injured, and trying to get up, but he couldn’t. The leader, the one in charge, he came up to your Dad... looked him in the eye, and shot him in the head.”

The pressure in his chest was burning now, his throat tight. He finally pulled together enough courage to look round at David, who was staring at the ground in front of him, his mouth a hard line, his jaw clenched tight.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save your Dad.” He said. It was barely a weak whisper, a feeble apology that died in the air between them. “He deserved... better.”

Beside him, David was silent. Mentally, MacTavish steeled himself, expecting him to lash out, silently relieved to see the tension fall away as his hard expression shattered. He pulled David to him, holding the boy close as his body shuddered with new grief.

The boy clung to him, and he clung back. He tried to bite down on it, but the sorrow welled unstoppable within him, overcoming his frigid pride until it was drowned in a slow rush of silent tears.


	3. Chapter 3

**May 2017**

 

Concealed in the wild rhododendrons at the edge of the garden, Price waited. The stagnant, air pressed around him, each breath filing his nose with the rich, pungent scent of the rotting leaf mould beneath. His jeans, cold and damp where soil pressed them to his skin, clung uncomfortably. He shifted, his shirt chafing at his neck where it stuck to the sweat-soaked skin beneath. He ignored it, and waited.

It wasn’t comfortable, but much better than some of the places he’d spent the last few months as he traversed the ruins of Europe at the mercy of vigilantes and looters sprouting in the wake of the war, barely making it out of Paris alive as swathes of the city descending into lawless anarchy. Finally, after six long months, he stepped onto English soil for the first time in three years and began the final slog back home.

No one gave him a second glance. With his scraggy beard, his long, greying hair tied back in a low ponytail at the nape of his neck, and false glasses, he looked like another aging hippy, winding his way across England talking to the trees and the henges, sleeping rough and looking rougher. Occasionally, he spotted his photograph staring grimly back at him, looking like a stranger, but he averted his eyes, because displayed next to his image, the face of MacTavish, serious, but still full of life, judged him from beyond the grave.

There had been no movement in the house for hours now. Empty, he suspected, but he was taking no chances. He didn’t know her regular routine enough to be sure, and he had known her art to make her keep odd hours. He decided to be prudent, and wait for the cover of nightfall.

He wasn’t interested in the house, technically, and if this had been a routine, professional job, he would have given it a detached survey and settled down to rest, but when he’d seen it for real, for the first time in over three years, something inside him had cracked, and suddenly, there were memories pouring out that he hadn’t even realised he could still remember.

Gaz showed him the derelict shell, his face bright with possibility in the crisp Spring morning, and the sound of the frosted grass crackling underfoot. Price remembered saying that he was a fucking idiot, that it was a pig in a poke, but nothing deterred Gaz’s grinning optimism. He remembered the echo of laughter in the barren, newly floored rooms. The wonderful scent of freshly sawn wood in the air. The awful taste of turpentine after an error with a mug of tea. The sharp pain of a blade slicing skin. Blood and dry wood dust on his tongue.

Then suddenly, on a fine summer night it was all over and done. After two long years of slogging it out, it was finally finished. There’d been a party.

_“Will you marry me?”_

He’d said it in the arbour, the first time they’d been alone all evening, and because, much as he hated to admit it, it had been spectacularly romantic draped in strings of lights. Around them night fell, the fading daylight painting the sky in vibrant shades of pink and gold. She’d looked stunning, even if she didn’t believe it, and even with his jacket incongruously draped over her gown, as she shivered in the late evening chill.

He felt like an idiot, genuflected, waiting an _age_ for her to turn round as his knee ground on the cold, hard slabs and for her to do so only when Gaz drunkenly exclaimed “Oh _, shit!”_ behind him.

He stopped, and closed his eyes, breathing hard. The memory had once been joyful, then bittersweet, and once the door of the cell slammed shut behind him, it had turned to ash. He had pushed it so far away that it had almost been forgotten about until it had risen up like an angry cobra, and sank its fangs into him, poisoning his mind with nebulous emotion but now, here, it was so agonising painful to think about that he choked and coughed, the sound like a gunshot over the still grass. He fought to calm himself, but it  became more and more of a struggle the closer he came to home, the feelings seeping up through the place he’d buried them, welling and threatening to drown him if he lingered.

He closed his eyes, and rolled onto his back, staring into the darkness of the branches and leaves meshing together above him. Anything to stop looking at the house. Above him, hidden in the dark, a bird trilled, oblivious to his presence. He suddenly felt so tired, so _old._ He would be fifty soon, a date that was unlikely to be commemorated by anyone, anywhere. He would have been alive for half a century, and for what? A son he’d not seen since he was born. A wife he was too guilty to face.

He rubbed his eyes with gritty fingertips, regretting his stupid decision to return, before stealing himself to the task at hand. He needed the guns, and he was going to get them before he vanished, for the last time, into the mist.

  


The shed stood on its own, at the rear of the house: a timber box with a slanted felt roof and a double door, behind which he knew stood a ride-on mower and enough tools to start an landscape gardening business: Gaz’s unrealised dream. In the moonless night, he could barely see its outline: a blacker shape in the darkness as he padded softly across the long, uncut grass of the lawn.

Price moved swiftly, dodging the range of the security lights. The house still had its original stables: holiday flats now, but if she’d taken the advice MacMillan had dished out, mothballed as a security hazard. Their windows were dark, lifeless holes in the blonde stone walls. He moved on, boxing the buildings by a wide margin, just in case.

He wasn’t interested in the contents of the shed per say, but what lay underneath: a concrete bunker that had been slipped into the design without anyone else’s knowledge. A secret place for all the accoutrements of his profession that Gaz had gathered over the years, tucked safely away from prying eyes.

 _Everyone_ kept a few pieces at home; the bosses turned a blind eye. It would only take one madman with a death-wish to make mincemeat of you, and in Price’s opinion, it was better to be prepared. Gaz had been more prepared than was, strictly speaking, necessary, but all the better for Price, planning to disappear into the wilds of rural England as anonymously as possible, but with all the protection he could fit into a stolen hatchback.

 

  
Vivianne awoke to an alarm and for a moment, on autopilot, she thumped the clock by the side of the bed. It had no effect, and it took a few more confused seconds before recognised it and jerked into full consciousness..

The security monitor at the side of the bed blinked amber. She picked it up and stared blearily at the display. If the house had been breached, she knew, it would have screamed its siren, but instead… she spotted the problem: the shed.

For a moment, she considered just going back to bed and dealing with it in the morning. No one coming to do her harm would break into the shed. She knew the most likely possibilities included the drunk kids from the village, or any of the farms further up the road.

That did it. She pulled back the covers and sat up. She was going to teach those stupid kids a lesson they wouldn’t forget in a hurry and to hell with it. She’d been polite about it, asking nicely if they wouldn’t mind not coming into the garden whilst Sam was there, because she didn’t want any false alarms and people getting into trouble thinking there were real intruders, but they _persisted_ and _laughed_ about it.

She felt under the bed and pulled the gun out, running her hand over the engraving on the stock and feeling suddenly very old and very alone, just a crotchety old widow in her nightclothes, storming out into the night. She imagined herself: hair wild, oversized t-shirt billowing in the wind and knew it would only put the fear of God into the very young and very surprised, but she was damned if she wasn’t going to defend what was hers.

 

  
When the door slammed open, Price knew it was over. The room filled with blinding light and he cringed away, holding his hands up against the inevitable surge of force that he knew would come.

“John? _John_?” The light wobbled and drifted down, away from his face. Pulsing after flashes of purple and red obscured his vision.

He recognised the voice. “Viv?” he said, squinting. He could make out the twin barrels now, inches away from his face. He froze.

The was a pause and then, “Holy _shit_ !” she whispered. “ _John_?”

“Put the gun down, Viv.” he said.

“What the fuck are you-” she stopped “Where the fuck have you _been_?”

“The _gun_ , Viv.”

She shifted her grip, pulling her finger back from the trigger and opened the breech. The beam of tactical light swung wildly away across the floor and then there was a click as she pressed the lightswitch and the room was filled with a dim glow.

They looked at each other: her jaw slack in an expression of pure incredulity, and she came to her senses in a second, her mouth closing with a snap and her bearing returning in the same moment, as if suddenly struck by an electrifying force.

“What _the fuck_ are you doing in my shed?”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**July 2012**

 

MacTavish awoke late in the morning, his neck aching and his head throbbing, reeking of stale alcohol, grease and old, dried-up vomit. Distant, hazy recollections floated up through the fog in his head: he remembered stopping for chips, and picking up the cheapest bottle of wine the corner shop could offer him, but after that it was a blur of increasingly obscured memories until he could remember nothing. He fell asleep on the couch during the evening, and to his appalled horror, been sick at some point later, but beyond the third glass of wine, his memory was a black hole.

When David sat up, wiped his eyes, and said he wanted his Mum, MacTavish let him go. After that, he hadn't the stamina to face the rest of the party, and jumped the crumbling brickwork of the wall into the thicket of trees beyond. Even at the time, he knew it was cowardly, and in the cold, hard light of the morning, he despised himself even more.

He had expected the confession to David to be cathartic, that it would make both of them feel better but even when he pushed aside the physical agony of the hangover, he didn't feel better, just angry.  _ Look at the state of this fucking place! At the nick of you!  _ He raged.

Disgusted with himself, he peeled his aching flesh from the worn velvet cushions and stood up, his vision spinning painfully. In the kitchen he looked at the week's worth of washing up as if seeing it for the first time. The bin overflowed, and even in the cool morning, it still stank. He found the least filthy glass and for lack of dish soap, rinsed it under the tap before filling it up with cold water and chugging it down. He repeated this process twice more, he rummaged in the kitchen drawers until he found a battered pack of aspirin. 

When the worst of the hangover abated, he went out for breakfast and returned armed with supplies. It took most of the rest of the day to clear out the detritus of his six week hiatus from normality, but he got it done, hating himself even more with every passing minute. He couldn't believe the state that he'd sunk to, but the evidence irrefutably filled ten bin bags and most of the glass recycling. As time went on, the inner fury rose higher and higher until it was an overwhelming self-centred rage.

 

 

For the next week, he was perpetually grumpy, but the force of the anger drove him, stoked a fire inside him. Price was impressed by his sudden passion to get back to work, but warned him that his mouthing off about the glacial slowness of his case might backfire in the long run, so MacTavish bit his tongue and submitted: oscillating between the physical and mental prodding of the medicals and working himself to exhaustion in pursuit of the stamina and physique he’d taken for granted six months before. Still, he kept his neck wound in, and let nature take its course.

As the time wore on, his emotions began to balance out, the peaks and troughs of his swinging moods evening into his more usual, prosaic affect, but a kernel of doubt about the party had begun to sprout in the back of his mind, penetrating his quiet moments with feelings of guilt. Had he done the right thing? How much of David’s best interests did he have at heart really, and how much of his motivation had been purely selfish? He’d heard nothing about the incident from Price, and frankly, he suspected that he just hadn’t realised that anything was amiss. 

Fate, it transpired, resolved the situation. He’d been running for a few weeks now, steadily building up his pace and distance through the town at first, and then out into the countryside, aiming to take the car out into the bleak expanse of the Brecon Beacons by the end of the week and attempt to replicate the forced march that made up the final test of physical selection. He was on his way back, going at a hard sprint over the playing field, when he heard a voice shout his name.

There were a few dozen kids and their families on the grass, and as he approached, he began to understand the pattern behind the milling bodies. There were several teams, and most of the parens wore the colours of the offspring they supported as they laughed and chatted on the sidelines. Vivianne, in a black vest and matching loose linen trousers, stood out on the edge, tossing a rugby ball to David so badly that MacTavish mentally winced. She waved at him, so he peeled away from the path across the grass and pulled up short beside her, breathing hard with the effort of his full-tilt run.

He caught his breath as she returned the ball awkwardly back to David, holding it above her head with both hands and sending it sailing through the air in an unnatural arc. The boy snatched the ball out of the air and looked back at them both, eyes narrowed. MacTavish caught his eye they nodded to each other, a distant gesture of mutual respect that bore no grudges, and for all its minuteness, the absence of hate in David’s eyes washed him with relief. 

“Did they not teach you rugby at school?” he asked. He wanted to steer the conversation as far away from the party as possible.

She laughed. “Not in my day.”

David lobbed the ball back at her, and she caught it but before she could sent it back, he stopped her. 

“Look.” he said, and gestured for her to hand it over. He threw it back to David properly, like he was passing it in game. The boy fumbled the catch, but he smiled, obviously glad for a the input of someone who knew what they were doing.

MacTavish caught the return, and demonstrated. “Throw it from the hip.” he said. She tried to copy him and sent the ball flying off to the left, and skewing past her son at a distance. He took off after it. 

MacTavish heard a whistle blow, and then David was off and running off into the direction of a coalescing mob of children without a backwards glance.

“Well, practice makes perfect.” he said.

Vivianne sighed. “I’m not really much good at this sort of thing.”

He understood suddenly: she wasn’t meant to be here, and she knew full well how bad a job she was doing trying to fill in for the man who should be. The shame of his arrogance punched him hard in the chest.

“No, I’m sorry. I-” He stopped. He felt ashamed at his gross insensitivity. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

She shrugged. “Frankly any advice would be a bonus. If it's not on a horse or powder, my family don't get involved.”

He grabbed at this lifeline,  picked up a discarded ball from a few paces away and demonstrated again, talking her through the movements, and they slung the ball back and forth for the next twenty minutes until she gave up, shaking her arms.

“Definitely an improvement!” He said, encouragingly. “

She laughed, and the rummaged in a cooler beside her bags. She passed him a bottle of water and then flopped down in the shade, her back against the trunk of a tree. He slouched against it and slid down to sit beside her, wincing as his hip hit a root.

“How are things?” asked MacTavish, tentatively.

“Better” she sighed. “I mean, worse initially, but then better. You were right. I think.” She pushed her fringe from her damp forehead.

He shrugged, trying not to stare. “I get it, you want to keep him safe, he's your boy. It's only natural.”

She gazed off into distance. David was warming up with the other kids, and appeared to be enjoying himself in the thick of it.

“How's life been treating you?” She asked.

“Still waiting to be passed fit.” He replied. “Panel's meeting in a fortnight though, so not long.” 

A long whistle blew behind them. “Game's starting.” She said, standing up, brushing off her trousers.

“I'll be off then.” He said, jerking his head in the direction of the town.

“Seriously, Iain.” She said. “Thanks for everything. Drop by the shop, if you're passing. Company’s always welcome.”

“Sure.” He replied and they looked at each other for long moment, until he turned and jogged away. 

 

  
He remembered about her request a few weeks down the line, when he looked at the date and saw the looming reminder about Maria’s birthday he’d pencilled in several months before. He sighed, knowing that he couldn’t even make any plans to visit the family until the final decision about his future had been rubber stamped. He didn’t want to think about the angry silence at the end of the phone when she asked, innocently, if would make it out to dinner with them this year, what with him actually being in the same country as the rest of the family for the first time in… he frowned, and counted:  _ three years? _

_ Three years… _ He’d had the time, but he’d let it slip through his fingers like sand, kicking back and enjoying himself like all the other young lads, letting the weekends slip away until he counted them up and realised he’d not been home in months. Suddenly, he was deployed, and the chance disappeared. Three  _ years _ . He pressed his lips together, and considered his options. 

His options lead him around the town, and then, almost without him thinking about, to the gallery: a mock Georgian shop-front in a part of town that ten years ago would have been terminally unfashionable, and cheap, but now boasted all the trappings of urban gentrification. He raised his eyebrows at a line of potted ornamental bay trees with three-figure price tags and an Aga showroom that now flanked The Saltyard. 

The sign on the door read “closed” but the door itself was propped open with a box clearly lifted from a pallet lying on the pavement outside. He grabbed the first one, and brought it inside. The shop was clearly between exhibitors, as the half devoted to whatever had caught Vivianne’s eye was bare of wall and full of unopened, flat boxes and the shop itself lay empty. He dropped the box down on the counter and called her name. 

He felt a sudden shiver as he remembered the last time he’d been kicked out of the waiting car in the drizzle to fetch the posters for whatever charitable nonsense had been dreamed up by some bored officer’s wife. She’d looked up at him with a smile that had hit him like a punch in the chest. She was older than her picture, her hair tidier and she had more clothes on but she was beautiful, and when she turned the full force of her personality onto him he shrank in its radiant glow, became a stuttering wreck.

_ She just wants a friend. _ He thought _. Nothing more. _ But when she jogged down the steps and appeared, breathless in the doorway, his heart leapt like it always had and pounded so hard that he could feel the force of it against his ribs. 

“Iain!” she cried, her face lighting up. For a moment she started forward and he thought, terrified, that she would hug him, but she stopped herself and sank back. She saw the box his hand rested on. “Oh! You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s no problem.” He said. “I’ll get the rest.” He turned away, grateful not to have to make eye contact. “So, big changes afoot then?”

“Yes.” she answered. “New exhibition opens tonight.” 

“Oh? Anything I’ve heard of?”

“Local girl. Went off to Cardiff a few years ago for college. Came back last summer and started painting.” She pulled the wrapping from one of the smaller frames and held it up. Bold, bright colours radiated out from the canvas: a summer scene  with vibrant yellow fields just before the harvest, and feathery dandelions in fine grass dominating the foreground.

“It’s lovely.” he said and then asked, looking around. “What about your own work?”

Her smile dissolved. “I’ve not been… painting.” she explained. 

“Of course.” MacTavish said, looking away and mentally cursing himself for putting his foot in his mouth, yet again.

“I didn’t say making art didn’t help, just… some things are personal.”

She hefted the painting around, shifting her grip around the heavy white frame and stared at it. “It is lovely though.” She smiled again. “This is the first showing I’ve actually arranged myself since…” she trailed off, and left the obvious unsaid. “Nothing really felt right, and what I was drawn to… not very commercially viable, I’m afraid.” 

She held the picture up to the wall, and bit her lip whilst she considered it for a moment. After a few seconds she put it down and stared at the various unwrapped rectangles leaning against the wall. 

“I’ll get the rest of these,” MacTavish said, nodding to the box he’d placed on the counter. 

“Oh, you don’t have to.” she said. 

“It’s no trouble.” He replied. The depth of the conversation made him uncomfortable, and he was glad for the distraction. 

Vivianne attacked the packaged paintings with alarming ferocity, stripping away the protective covers with what MacTavish recognised as a standard issue bayonet, until they were all exposed. He watched her shuffle them about for a few minutes, before he offered a suggestion. 

“Look.” He held out his hands and she passed over the frame, awkwardly as they stood a respectable distance from each other, side-by-side. For a moment, as she struggled with the weight their arms crossed and they touched, his hand accidentally gripping her fingers and the frame together. 

“Sorry.” she said, with a little laugh and he had to look away as blood rose to his face. 

“Over here.” he said, walking quickly to the end of the room, talking over his embarrassment. “See, the colours are wrong with the others, too jarring and it’s the only one that’s got a lot of red in it. It’s got to be by itself.”

He stood back when it was hung. She was looking at him quizzically, her hands on her hips and her head inclined. 

“You’re right.” she said, smiling. “You’ve got a good eye.” She held his gaze for a second too long, biting the edge of her lip before she turned away. 


End file.
